A gig first for me, I turned up with tins that weren’t beer.
Exactly like a Chiswickian Diagon Alley, the venue was cunningly hidden out the back of the George IV pub, disguised as a Tesco Express complete with supermarket trolley. I hope Alistair got his pound back OK.
Disappointingly, no one wanted to scan my ticket’s QR code at the till, and I didn’t seem to qualify for any loyalty points. Aisle 1 appeared to be preserved yellow bat spleens at an extortionate price, Aisle 2 was drinks. Aisle 2 won.
I’ll never forget a gig I once went to at Uni. Not because I rocked out to tunes oozing energy from a big up-and-coming band, or for the full to the rafters venue (if the people inside had been Spiderman). But for my friend’s reaction.
Still euphoric, I turned to her on the way out. “Weren’t they fantastic?” I enthused.
“I thought there’d be chairs”, she replied, somewhat perplexingly.
“Oh”, I said. “But what did you think of the band?”
My friend would’ve been in her element tonight.
As I’d been to Alistair Griffin’s potluck gigs before, I’d resigned myself to it possibly not being a proper gig with the band. Not everyone had.
Anyone expecting the album was going to be disappointed, but anyone expecting chairs would be ecstatic. My Uni friend would have had an apoplexy.
This is Albion Sky at a fancy dress party
Alistair didn’t fancy hauling the amps in from the van, so we got the Asda Smartprice acoustic special. Showcasing his best music with some semblance of a band would have been too rational.
The exciting pre-gig rumour about him breaking his 50p-off-stickered, toneless guitar turned out to be groundless, as Griffin turned up with it, wearing a jacket with the collar turned up as usual. Someone told him this looked cool as a practical joke, and ten years on, he’s still not realised.
There was also a keyboard player who forgot to play. Or maybe he just happened to be standing behind a keyboard.
Griffin’s strumming was the sole accompaniment to the opening couple of songs, so their melodies remained a bit of a mystery.
The first turned out to be I Wish For You the World, a song full of regrets which gloomily suggests we give up as it’s too late to ever achieve our dreams.
“And even though I’ll never get to show you what I’m worth”, gets to me, and not in a good way.
Then came the pretty version of Willow Girl, (bearing no resemblance to the rather good album version).
Hot on their heels was a frankly awful cover of the Beatles’ She Loves You which is too high for Mr Griffin, enhanced by his view that if ‘she loves you’ it’s definitely not a good thing, even if the songwriter and the rest of the known universe think it is.
Things were so lively we barely needed the snooker table in the corner or the game of musical chairs we’d started. And the Thomas the Tank Engine ride was definitely overkill.
But after this three-song warm-up, the gig stepped up a notch as the keyboard player noticed he had fingers.
And a cellist and violinist teleported on stage from out of Waitrose where they’d been held up at the checkout buying tins of tomatoes.
Sounding much better with a bit of life in the accompaniment, we got quite a nice version of Just Drive, then Blown Away, though not literally. I would’ve settled for some picky guitar over the strings though.
At the hairdressers, Leddra decided to go with purple (Image courtesy of Aakarakingdoms/FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
Next, we got Griffin’s new single, The One, a duet with Leddra Chapman who amazingly happened to be there buying a pot noodle, so joined in. Just as well, as heaven help us all if Alistair had had to remember the words to her bit as well.
This is a catchy tune, with a folky-pop sound on the record that kicks into something more. Leddra is certainly a big talent, with a beautifully pure-toned voice and they blended well singing live.
Griffin is cornering the market in TV sport-montage music; this song played out at the end of the BBC’s coverage of The Open golf. I expect it’ll be squeezed onto his forthcoming ‘Maniacal Montage Mayhem’ EP, but get the single version now, just in case.
Leddra hurried off to Sainos before it closed and we got What If, another subdued and regretful, but pretty nice song, with some beautifully-sad lines that resonate with me like:
“What if I don’t see you, when we’re standing face to face?” among others.
Another sporting theme, this one is a Griffin special written for the BBC’s montage shown after Andy Murray’s 2013 Wimbledon semi-final win, and a couple of other times, though not after the final sadly. That EP is getting pretty full.
Oh no, it’s still there! And someone’s stuck the photo on all me tour posters
Then Alistair got on the tannoy to explain why I’d just lugged a load of tins of the non-beer kind halfway across London.
Promoted as the ‘Foodbank Tour’, Griffin is giving proceeds to The Trussell Trust for its foodbanks. So we had to ‘bring a tin to get in’. You couldn’t make it up! But if you’re going to have a PR gimmick, make it a worthwhile one. And it got him some media coverage, so it was a good one too.
Appropriately set-listed after the food news was Kipper aka Save This Day. I love the band version of this on the album, one of my favourites. Then Albion Sky which works really well acoustically, I Have Lived and arguably the best-sung song of the evening, Always No. 1, which sounds great acoustically too.
To finish we got a second go at Just Drive, despite having countless better songs and the lack of enthusiasm as it was announced (again). Apart from the noisy bloke in from Sky TV, that is. It’ll have been in homage to the many repeats shown by Sky, to thank them for getting the readies out and using it as their Formula One theme tune.
Shorter than I’d expected, an evening put on specially to promote Griffin could have stretched to more than 50 minutes for our 14 quid, surely?
No – or as Alistair put it, “Tough titty”, that’s it.
15 August 2013
Check Alistair Griffin’s official website for details of new dates being added soon.
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